“Stop GDP to Change the World”, The Network of Wellbeing

Read GovInn Director Lorenzo Fioramonti‘s guest blog post on the Network of Wellbeing website. The post is part of the “Sharing the World” series, which focuses on the links between wellbeing, consumerism and the environment. In this post, Professor Fioramonti discusses the negative roll of Gross Domestic Product, and the need to move the focus from a production and consumer centred approach to one focused on the wellbeing of the people and planet.

Traditionally our societies have pursued a narrow definition of economic growth as a means to attain development. Over time, the means has become an end in itself. We now associate development with growth, although the two are by no means synonymous. More importantly, the very meaning of development needs to be questioned, as its underlying nature should indicate a process-based functionality rather than an end goal. Development cannot be the end goal: it is itself a process towards a higher state of evolution. How we currently measure this process needs to be changed, to move beyond the limits of GDP.